[siren wails]
[operator] Hampton County 911, where is your emergency?
This is Alex Murdaugh at 4147 Moselle Road.
I need the police and an ambulance immediately.
My wife and child have been shot badly.
[operator] You said 4147 Moselle Road in Islandton?
-[Alex] Yes, sir, 4147 Moselle Road. -[operator] Okay.
-[operator] Stay on the line. -[Alex] Please hurry.
This is a cold-blooded murder.
[phone beeps]
[officer] Central 717. Scene is secure.
Got a Whiskey Fox, Whiskey Mike. Both with gunshot wounds to the head.
[dog barks]
[tense music plays]
[Alex] This is a long story.
My son was in a boat wreck, oh, a few months back.
I know that's what it is.
[suspenseful music plays]
[woman] Hello, this is an AmTel operator
calling from Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center
with a prepaid collect call from…
[Alex] Alex.
Hey, Bus.
-[Buster] Hey. -[Alex] How you doing?
[Buster] Good.
[Alex] Listen. Jim told me they indicted a bunch more things last Friday,
but you know that's just overkill, right?
[Buster] Yeah.
[Alex] They just trying to pile it on me now. You know that, right?
[Buster] I'm aware.
[Alex] But I can take it.
So don't let it worry you.
[tense music plays]
-[man 1] Alex Murdaugh… -[woman] Was it worth it?
-Was it worth it? -[man 1] Why did you do it?
[woman] Enjoying your time out of jail?
[man 1] Shame on you for what you did to your wife and your son!
[woman] Just curious.
[man 2] Buster, anything to say?
[tense music continues]
My name is Rebecca, Becky Hill,
and I am a native of Walterboro.
I love my county, and I love my job.
I am the clerk of court for Colleton County.
We are an elected official that maintains the things that go on in the courthouse.
Preparing for the trial of Alex Murdaugh was huge.
The Murdaughs have been practicing and actually prosecuting cases
in that courthouse since 1920.
You walked into the courtroom and there was Alex's grandfather on the back wall
in this kind of gilded portrait.
The judge ordered the portrait to come down,
so when you walked in and looked to your left,
there was a lighter spot where the portrait normally hangs.
For a hundred years, the Murdaughs have been prosecuting murder cases
in that exact room.
[Becky] It'd been a long time since a trial of this magnitude
had happened to a small town in South Carolina.
We knew that we had to get together as a county
and be prepared for anything that might come up.
During jury selection, one of the things that just brought home
how small a community this is,
they sent out 900 summons.
If you went to church that morning,
one in 20, one in 25 people got a jury summons.
So my daughter almost became a juror.
She was so excited.
Just a very tight-knit community
where it's not enough to say, "I knew the Murdaughs."
It has to be like, "Well, you know, I went to the prom with Alex Murdaugh."
It's day two.
Inside this courthouse earlier today,
the jury certification process has been concluded.
We now have a pool of potential jurors
from which we will ultimately get the 12 jurors and six alternates.
I heard it was over 900 people they had to select from.
I was the second person chosen.
It was a big deal. We had to get it right. We had to give Mr. Murdaugh a fair chance.
I was lucky to get a seat. And I knew I wanted to be here every day.
I knew it was important to be in the courtroom every day.
You got to court around 8 a.m. in the morning.
Court usually started around 9 or 9:30.
There was a line of people wrapped around the courthouse.
It looked like a ride to get onto a Disney roller coaster.
[Nancy Grace] We are heading straight into the courtroom.
I'll see you in South Carolina.
[man] People took pictures of all the news outlets.
Some even filmed social media videos.
[woman 1] My team and I arrived at the courthouse at about eight o'clock.
[woman 2] You know, it is just madness here, really. It goes on and on and on.
OJ Simpson is reacting to the Alex Murdaugh trial.
He posted a three-minute video on social media.
Take a listen.
It's me, yours truly.
A whole lot of people are asking me what I think about this Alex Murdaugh trial.
I don't know why they think I'm an expert on it, but…
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if he beats this. I'm just saying.
[Valerie] Coming into the trial, very little had been released to the public.
We know from the shell casings found at the scene
what types of guns Maggie and Paul had been shot with.
And we know that the Murdaughs own those types of guns,
but the murder weapons themselves were never found.
There was no witness to everything that happened that night.
I've heard people say that he had help.
There was the "Cousin Eddie" theory.
[siren wails]
That's the guy who Alex said shot him in the head
and had all the checks going to him right up until the murders.
You walk outside your house,
and you see snow all over the ground as far as the eye can see,
that is circumstantial evidence that it snowed while you were asleep last night.
It's just as important as direct evidence,
but sometimes, jurors have been conditioned,
and people have been conditioned, to believe that for someone to be guilty,
you have to convince them beyond every doubt.
Not just a reasonable doubt.
So it was a heavily circumstantial case
that involved a violent act against someone's wife and child.
I felt that convincing people with circumstantial evidence
would be a very high hurdle for us to clear.
Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin and the legal team they put together,
they're very competent lawyers. They're very capable lawyers.
I think everyone universally respects their ability as a criminal defense team.
We certainly did.
I remember telling Creighton one day… It was a few weeks from the trial.
I said, "Creighton,
I'm gonna come down there to Walterboro,
and I'm gonna be involved in this case."
"But I don't want you to feel I'm taking it over from you."
The analogy that he uses is that he was like FDR
and I was like Eisenhower.
"I'm your boss, but you're the guy storming the beaches of Normandy."
[Becky] The first day of trial,
Alex was coming in and said, "Good morning, Ms. Becky. How are you?"
It was more of a lightheartedness.
It was, "We're gonna get through this in about a week or two."
We're gonna all go home.
All of this is just gonna go away.
We will now proceed to opening statements by the State.
Thank you, Your Honor. You're gonna see video statements
of Alex Murdaugh.
There's a lot of forensic evidence.
A key piece of forensic evidence that you're gonna hear in this case
is the cell phone evidence.
Alex's cell phone, Maggie's cell phone,
Paul's cell phone.
You're gonna hear some of what was going on in Alex Murdaugh's life
leading up to that day.
Stuff that happened that very day. Stuff that was leading up.
A perfect storm that was gathering.
Listen to that gathering storm that all came to a head
on June 7th, 2021,
the day, the evidence will show, he killed Maggie and Paul.
You're also gonna see the body-worn camera of the officers who arrived at the scene.
Pay attention to what he says. Look at how he's acting.
He says within a few minutes this is about the boat case.
[Alex] This is a long story.
My son was in a boat wreck, oh, a few months back.
He's been getting threats.
I know that somebody… I know that's what it is.
[Dick Harpootlian] This is Alex Murdaugh.
And Alex was the loving father of Paul
and the loving husband of Maggie.
I submit to you what you have heard from the Attorney General as "facts"
are not.
There's no eyewitness.
There's no camera. There's no fingerprints.
There's no forensics tying him to the crime. None.
He didn't do it.
[Valerie] The defense made an argument that the motive was a revenge killing.
Maybe it was drug related.
Maybe it was some random vigilantes. Maybe this had to do with the boat wreck.
In an almost entirely circumstantial case, there were things that didn't add up.
[Creighton] Right out of the gate, it was important to establish
that the catalyst that really started everything to unravel
was the boat case.
The boat case created possible criminal liability for Paul
that threatened to undermine that family legacy
that was so important to Alex.
[Morgan] I think when Mr. Alex mentioned the boating accident,
he was setting it up so it wasn't back on him.
I mean, the same way as he came in the hospital right after the boat wreck.
I feel like he would do or say anything to put the blame on someone else.
Miley, Mallory, Paul, Anthony, Connor. I think he blames us all for his downfall.
The boating accident is the reason
why there has been so much light brought to everything that this man has done.
I don't think the boat crash
had the slightest bit to do with Paul and Ms. Maggie's death.
That was a whole kind of hurt
to hear come out of anybody's mouth, much less his.
[Blanca] You go bye-bye? Sit.
Good boy. Good boy. Go.
Come on, baby.
Just last week, I actually sat down and I watched the documentary.
I call 'em kids. I know they're young people,
but I got to see their story.
How they hurt.
[Morgan] Mallory!
Where the fuck is Mallory?
[tense music plays]
[Blanca] Anthony struck a chord with me, the way he described Paul.
You know, they had fun. They fished, they hunted.
You know, the other side of him.
I had been working for Maggie and Alex for years.
Prior to that, I was a correction officer in a prison.
I met Alex in the late '90s.
I worked with Alex translating what was being said in court
for Spanish-speaking clients.
Shortly after that, I met his wife, Maggie.
Maggie needed help dealing with the boys.
I said, "If you want, I can help her."
When I first started there with Maggie,
I realized she was not a prissy, princess-type, you know, snob.
She was funny.
Come on, Bubba.
You ready to go? Load up. Load up.
[Morgan] Maggie loved Bubba.
He was like her prized possession. He was not a kennel dog at all.
Wherever they went, he went. If they were on the boat, he'd go.
If they were going to visit Maggie's family, he would go.
Come here, Bubba. Come here.
[tense music continues]
Throughout the years, our friendship was a lot closer.
[cell phone vibrates]
She would call me at 11, 12 o'clock at night and ask me if I was awake.
Of course I was awake. I answered the phone.
She'd be like, "Okay, let me tell you what I did."
I could tell that Alex loved Maggie.
He would walk in the kitchen in the morning
and say, "Hey, babe, gotta go."
"Okay, talk to you later."
Five minutes down the road, he'd be on the phone with her.
She had him on a pedestal, basically.
She was just proud of her husband.
Proud of his accomplishments.
But there was an image that you have to keep.
The Murdaugh name had a lot to do with it.
[Morgan] Paul and I dated for four years.
At the time, Maggie and I used to talk a lot.
We'd just sit in the kitchen and talk.
She told me that one time,
Mr. Randolph's wife, Ms. Libby, wanted a divorce,
and he published her obituary in the Hampton Guardian.
And it was an obituary that he wrote himself,
and I think it was kind of like a gesture to kind of scare her into staying.
I think that was her way of just letting me know what I was signing myself up for.
I think it was kind of like a warning.
[tense music plays]
Are we ready to proceed by the State?
-[Creighton] Yes, we are, Your Honor. -Yes, sir.
As a prosecutor, you're speaking on behalf of the victim,
and your job is to take the facts, as you know them to be,
and tell a story using those facts
and the evidence that have been allowed to be presented to the jury.
So you kind of have to tell the story out of order
and then put it all back together in closing arguments.
[Creighton] I wanted to play the bodycams for the jury early on
because I wanted them to get to know his voice,
which is very distinct.
Your Honor, I will point out there are graphic images on this,
so everybody needs to cover up their monitors.
[officer 1] Central 717. Scene is secure.
Got a Whiskey Fox, Whiskey Mike. Both with gunshot wounds to the head.
[Alex] I wanted to let you know because of the scene,
I did get a gun and bring it down here.
[officer 1] It's in your vehicle?
-Do you have any guns on you? -[Alex] No, sir.
-It's leaning against my car. -[officer 1] Turn around for me.
-[Alex] I don't have anything. -[officer 1] Yes, sir. I see that.
Is this the only firearm with you?
This is the only one, or is there any more in the truck?
I believe that's it.
[tense music plays]
[dog barking]
-[Alex] They are dead, aren't they? -[officer 1] Yes, sir.
That's what it looks like.
[Alex sobs]
[Alex] Randy. Maggie and Paul are dead.
[officer 1] When was the last time you were here with them?
-Or talked to them, or anything like that? -It was earlier tonight.
-Uh, I… I don't know the exact time, but… -[officer 1] Okay.
I left. I was probably gone an hour and a half for my mom's,
and I saw them about 45 minutes before that.
I rode around with Paul for two hours this afternoon.
[officer 1] That's your son? Paul?
Okay.
Is somebody going to check 'em?
[officer 1] They've already checked 'em.
-[Alex] They did check? -[officer 1] Yes.
-[Alex] It's official that they're dead? -[officer 1] That's what it looks like.
[Alex sobs]
-[Alex] I'm sorry. -[officer 1] No, you're fine.
[Alex clears throat]
How you doing?
[tense music continues]
[chatter on radio]
Are they covering 'em up?
[officer 1] Y'all familiar with this family?
[officer 2] I wasn't until he told me their names.
All right. I'll fill you in later.
[officer 3] The gentleman in the white shirt is the husband of her,
father of him.
That is Paul Murdaugh.
Paul Murdaugh was that guy in the boating accident from a while back.
[officer 4] It's going to be retaliation for the family.
[officer 3] Most likely.
[Becky] Being in the courtroom, we were just trying to figure out
who in the world could have come and done this.
I know most of the people involved in the boat wreck,
and that just didn't sit right.
With knowing someone from the boat wreck,
a family or a friend from that particular side of things
would want to come and harm them,
it just didn't seem to fit that profile.
[dogs bark]
[officer 5] In just a minute, we're gonna pick this sheet up.
All right.
And what I'd like to do is pick it up this way so they can't see.
-[officer 6] Yup. -We're gonna see if there's a…
'Cause it changes the scope of everything.
-If there's firearms underneath him… -[officer 6] Yup.
…we can slow down with all this shit and let SLED handle it.
[officer 6] I get that.
[officer 5] But if it's not, we're gonna back everything off real quick.
-[officer 6] Okay. -[officer 5] Back everybody further out.
[tense music plays]
[officer 3] There's his phone.
[officer 5] I don't think he put that phone back on his behind.
[officer 3] I haven't asked the dad about the phone,
but Dad did say he came over and checked their pulses.
He did have a shotgun with him. I have secured that in my vehicle.
[officer 5] It's an upwards shot. There's blood all over the ceiling.
Went in here, took everything out the top.
[officer 1] That would point to suicide.
[officer 6] So he got here, took the shotgun.
-[officer 1] That's what I'm thinking. -[officer 6] Possible.
Paul's brain has been blown out of his body.
Maggie has been shot multiple times.
They were fearful that Paul had tried to kill his mother and then kill himself,
and so they needed to get under his body and see if there was a gun under there.
Oh gosh, could it have been a murder-suicide?
But why wasn't Alex involved in any way
as far as being shot or at least hurt in some way?
[Creighton] May it please the Court,
the State of South Carolina will call Special Agent David Owen to the stand.
[somber music plays]
[David] I arrived on the scene at approximately midnight.
He had on a white T-shirt, green cargo khaki-type shorts,
bright tennis shoes.
[Valerie] In the bodycam footage, David gets into the driver's side.
Alex, on the passenger side.
Agent Owen takes his bodycam and puts it on the mirror of the vehicle,
so you have sort of this fishbowl effect,
where you… you have a very close view of… of Alex.
Just start at the top. Take your time.
Um, like, when I came back here,
I mean, I pulled up and I could see him, and, you know, I knew something was bad.
I ran out. I knew it was really bad.
[cries]
My… my boy over there, I could see… I could see his brain.
[sobs]
[Alex] I think I tried to turn Paul over first.
His cell phone popped out of his pocket.
I started to try to do something with it, thinking maybe…
But then, I put it back down really quickly.
Then, I went to my wife, and I…
-I… I mean, I could see… -[David] Mm-hmm.
[Alex sniffs]
What made you come out here tonight?
My mom's a late-stage Alzheimer's patient. My dad's in the hospital.
Um, my mom gets anxious.
When she does, I went to check on them.
[David] Have y'all been having problems out here?
Trespassers? People breaking in?
[Alex] None that I know of. The only thing…
What comes to my mind
is my son Paul was in a boat wreck a couple of years ago.
There's been a lot of negative publicity about that,
and there's been a lot of people online, just really vile stuff.
But he's been punched and hit and just attacked a lot.
So, you know. But I mean, nothing like this.
[David] Yeah. Any… any one person in particular or group of people?
I don't know.
No one that knew Paul Murdaugh
threatened him for anything.
Any of the threats or the trash talk came from people that probably
have never even been to Hampton, South Carolina,
much less knew who Paul was.
[Blanca] His apartment was on the bottom floor.
He would tell Maggie that kids would come up to the window and call him,
"You murderer! You murderer!" you know, and yell stuff at him.
Even without talking to Paul, I knew the whole time
that he was sorry.
Even though he never really got the chance to apologize
openly, publicly, whatever you want to call it, uh,
you know, me and the… the few close friends that he had kn-knew,
uh,
he… he was hurting.
[Blanca] Paul wanted to say some things,
but I believe that he was being held back or, you know.
Up until the day he died, Mallory's obituary was in Paul's truck.
There wasn't a day that went by
that he did not, uh, remember Mallory.
[Creighton] At this time, the State of South Carolina calls Ms. Blanca Simpson.
The timeline of June 7th is obviously very important.
I don't just want the facts of what happened on the day of.
I wanna know who are these people.
We had to try to humanize Maggie and Paul as best we could through our witnesses.
Juries should know who we're talking about,
and that was challenging.
But Blanca, I think, stood out for that reason.
[Blanca] Even though you can't tell, my whole body was shaking.
I… I glanced over just slightly,
and I saw the look that he had,
and I realized he wanted me to look over.
But I knew that if I would have looked over,
um, I wouldn't have been able to get through my testimony.
Ms. Simpson, I'd like for you to go back in your mind now and take this jury back
to June 7, 2021.
[gentle music plays]
[alarm clock beeps]
[tense music plays]
[Blanca] Maggie and I used… Always talked on the phone.
We did talk on the phone that morning, and we talked throughout the day as well.
[Maggie] Oh, really?
[laughs] Well, then what is it?
[tense music continues]
[Blanca] On my way into work, she called me,
and then she sent me a text.
She asked me if I would pick up Capri-Suns for Alex.
I said, "Sure, I'll do it."
While we were talking on the phone, I heard Alex in the background.
She had a doctor's appointment, so we missed each other by, like, five minutes.
[tense music plays]
[Blanca] When I arrived,
Alex came out of the room
maybe about an hour after I got there.
He had on a pair of khakis and his blue blazer.
Alex, he liked things done a certain way.
His suits, when you got 'em back from the cleaners,
you took 'em off the hanger that they came in,
and you put 'em on certain hangers.
The polo shirts, he wanted the collar up and the top buttoned.
That morning, he was kind of jittery.
It seemed like he just put on the clothes he was wearing the night before
and just threw a jacket on.
He didn't bother to fix his hair.
I mean, he was just… He looked tired.
Half of his collar was sticking up over the jacket.
I said, "Come here,"
and I fixed the collar.
He said, "All right, B, I'll see you later,"
and he walked out the door.
[Creighton] We knew that Alex was going to have to work that day on the boat case,
fighting off a very powerful civil case.
It would expose Alex's finances.
One way in which we tied the significance of the boat case,
it was with Jeanne Seckinger,
the chief financial officer of the law firm.
[Valerie] Jeanne is CFO but also the COO. She runs the place.
She's extremely smart, um, and she is no-nonsense.
[Creighton] Jeanne Seckinger found proof that Alex had been stealing,
and on June 7th, she confronted him.
It came to my attention $792,000 in total was missing.
We were not thinking about Alex misappropriating funds.
What we were concerned about
was he was trying to put some money into Maggie's name
to avoid things for the boat accident.
So, on June 7th, I was gonna make another run at finding out what had happened.
His office is on the second floor.
When I came up, he turned and looked at me and said, "What do you need now?"
and gave me a very dirty look.
Not a look that I'd ever received from Alex.
He took a phone call in the middle of that conversation.
[phone rings]
[Jeanne] That phone call was about his father,
who was in the hospital.
He was gonna be terminal.
There was nothing else they'd be able to do for his father.
So that changed the mood of the conversation.
We quit talking about business,
and I immediately asked about him and his family and his dad.
We got talking as friends at that point. Concerned over the family.
[Blanca] Maggie had sent me a text
stating that Alex's father was back in the hospital.
I think she knew at that point that if something happens to Randolph,
Alex's gonna lose it,
'cause he was really close to his dad, just like Paul.
Paul was really close to Mr. Randolph.
It might not have been spoken, but I think the family knew
that once Mr. Randolph was no longer alive,
the family dynamic was gonna change.
There was not gonna be that family unity anymore.
I was a caregiver for Alex's mom for three years.
Mr. Randolph was something else.
He was very outspoken
and a good person to work with.
On June 7th, the family let us know that he was in the hospital.
He was sick, and it was getting worse.
It was a hard time for the Murdaugh family.
A very difficult time for them.
[Blanca] Whilst Maggie was at her doctor's appointment later on that day,
we were texting.
Maggie was worried about Alex's health.
Alex had been constantly back and forth with his dad.
I know Maggie would get upset sometimes
because it seemed like he was always on the go,
and she felt that his brothers were always calling him to help Mr. Randolph.
I told her just to pray about it, and y'all need to relax, take some time.
Basically, that's what I was trying to let her know.
And trying to comfort her as well, because she was worried.
That's kind of what surprised me,
that Alex wasn't the one that went to the hospital that day.
[tense music plays]
[phone rings]
Around four o'clock, my office extension rang.
[phone rings]
[tense music continues]
[Jeanne] I remember that, because I had been under the impression
Alex was gonna leave and go to the hospital.
He was asking me for some information on his 401(k) balances
because he stated he was working on some financials
for the hearing on the boat accident.
It didn't surprise me that he's calling and asking me about that,
but I was surprised that he was in the building working on it.
I just thought he was leaving to deal with his father.
[Blanca] During the week, Maggie had been staying at Edisto
because they had some work going on out there.
She was just trying to get ready for Fourth of July.
You know, she wanted her family to come out there.
She had texted me, saying that Alex wanted her to come back to Moselle.
He told Paul to come home as well.
Maggie asked, "Would you cook dinner, 'cause Paul's coming?"
[somber music plays]
[Blanca] I had texted her that dinner was on the stove.
I finished cleaning, locked up. I left.
[tense music plays]
[Blanca] I was expecting to get a call that evening.
And come nine o'clock,
I was wondering why she hadn't called me yet,
because usually when I cook, she always used to call me
to let me know, you know, "We ate dinner. It was really good."
But that was the last time that I truly ever spoke to Maggie.
[tense music continues]
[somber music plays]
[gunshots]
[dogs barking]
[gunshot]
[cell phone vibrates]
[tense music plays]
[cell phone rings]
[foreboding music plays]
[music fades]
[somber music plays]
[music fades]